If you click the "Remove" button for a highlighted user, a pop-up menu will ask if you would like to also delete the user's home directory (along with all of their files). If you click "No", the user will still be deleted but their home directory will remain. If you have only created one user account, the "Remove" button will be greyed out as you need at least one user to be able to login to the PC-BSD® system.

While a removed user will no longer be listed, the user account will not actually be deleted until you click the "Apply" button. A pop-up message will indicate that you have pending changes if you close User Manager without clicking "Apply". If you change your mind, click "No" and the user account will not be deleted; otherwise, click "Yes" and the user will be deleted and User Manager will close.

The password for any user can be changed by first highlighting the user name then clicking the "Change Password" button. You will not be prompted for the old password in order to reset a user's password; this can be handy if a user has forgotten their password and can no longer log into the PC-BSD® system. If you click the "Change Admin Password" button, you can change the root password.

If you click the "Advanced View" button, this screen will change to show all of the accounts on the system, not just the user accounts that you created. An example is seen in Figure 8.9b.

Figure 8.9b: Viewing All Accounts and Their Details

The accounts that you did not create are known as system accounts and are needed by the operating system or installed applications. You should not delete any accounts that you did not create yourself as doing so may cause a previously working application to stop working. "Advanced View" provides additional information associated with each account, such as the user ID number, full name (description), home directory, default shell, and primary group. System accounts usually have a shell of nologin for security reasons, meaning that an attacker cannot try to login to the system using that account name.

To add an account to a group, highlight the group name in the first column. Then, highlight the account name in the "Available" column. Click the right arrow and the selected account will appear in the "Members" column. You should only add user accounts to groups that you create yourself or when an application's installation instructions indicate that an account needs to be added to a group.

If you click the "Add" button, a pop-up menu will prompt you for the name of the new group. Once you press "OK", the group will be added to the "Groups" column.

If you click the "Remove" button, the highlighted group will automatically be deleted after you press the "Apply" button, so be sure to do this with care. Again, do not remove any groups that you did not create yourself or applications that used to work may stop working.